Jose Mourinho has suggested that Alexis Sanchez’s Manchester United struggles stemmed from him being unhappy.
After much fanfare, Sanchez became the Premier League‘s highest-earning player when he made the high profile switch from Arsenal to United, with Henrikh Mkhitaryan going in the opposite direction.
While expectations were high of the Chilean, the reality of his 18 month spell was at a complete contrast, scoring just three goals in 32 league appearances in the famous Manchester United shirt.
Neither Jose Mourinho nor his successor, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, were able to get a tune out of the 30-year-old, seeing the former Barcelona attacker being sent out on loan to Inter Milan for the season where he will be hoping to rediscover a semblance of form.
Speaking about Sanchez’s apparent demise, Mourinho has suggested his struggles were because he was ‘a sad man’.
“Sanchez… I felt him [to be] not a happy man. And I think in every job you have when you are not happy it is not so easy to perform at every level,” Mourinho said in an interview with the Telegraph.
“And maybe I am wrong. Maybe it was me who was not capable to get into him and to get the best out of him.
“As a manager sometimes you have the capacity to get the best out of the players and other times you are not successful in that approach. But the reality is that I always felt [of Sanchez], ‘a sad man’.
“So probably in Italy he will recover this. I hope he can. I always wish well to every player.”
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